Authoritarian conventionalism prescribes how people should act, ignoring actual conduct

Evidence

I use the term “norms” here in the normative, not the descriptive, sense. The right-wing authoritarian’s conventionalism specifies how people ought to act, not how they do. The authoritarian’s code is conventional because it is based on long-standing tradition and custom, not because it actually describes how most people behave today. Thus it may be that most adults in our society engage in sexual intercourse before marriage. But the fact that most people are “sinning” shows the authoritarian only that it is a sinful world. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 165

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharp operational definition: authoritarian conventionalism is normative, not descriptive — the majority sinning only confirms a sinful world.
• SEED: Angle for an essay on why appeals to ‘most people already do this’ fail against moral traditionalists: their norm is prescriptive, so prevalence data is immaterial to them — explains why behavioral-normalization campaigns backfire.